I started this as a response to loveliberty's diary on Talon today... but it started to get too long!
OK, I'm not one who thinks a journalism degree is necessary for becoming a good journalist. BUT there are certain basics one should know when setting up in the business.
Before the Internet, it was nigh on impossible for someone to start a publication without having at least a few more experienced people involved. These would explain that you don't print press releases, even in part, under your own byline and without attribution. They would explain that, when you quote someone you didn't interview directly, that you clearly state where the quotation originated. "And this, and so much more!" (From T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--just in case anyone is feeling snarky).
The people at Talon News seem to have decided that they could be journalists by following the Kingston Trio model: "So get yourself an outfit and be a cowboy, too." (OK: that's from "The Streets of Larado"). It was too easy; why bring on anyone with experience for something as simple as this?
But experience does count, especially when you start facing questions of accuracy and attribution.
Sure, there need to be places where it doesn't count, where one learns by doing. In terms of Internet media, the blogs are one place where that can happen, where people are given the chance to make mistakes within a supportive milieu. Even so, much better stuff can come out of such venues than appears in the "professional" media; "amateur" status does not mean the work is second-rate. The blogs, to return to Prufrock, allow "time yet for a hundred indecisions,/And for a hundred visions and revisions"--time to learn, to experiment, and to grow.
One of the reasons for this is that there is no assumption, on the blogs, that a poster has a professional background in journalism. The bloggers don't have to meet "professional" standards.
On the other hand, Talon News set itself up as professional, claiming a White House correspondent who STILL claims what he was doing is "journalism." That presentation carries with it the assumption of journalistic standards of attribution and accuracy.
Which, of course, were never met.